The first First Crack. Figuring out the podcasting setup, praising WordPress, and some other things on my mind. currently unavailable. Seriously, I don’t know where it went.
Monthly Archives: October 2004
One Sheet Wonders
I’ve been reading Ricardo Semler’s fantastic book, Maverick on how he turned around SemCo in the 1980’s. Each chapter ends with a nugget of organizational wisdom concisely delivered in a sentence or two. This is exactly what I was talking about in my earlier post, Once More, In Half the Time. In addition to also …
Gate 3 Work Club Opens
The Gate 3 Work Club officially opens this week in Emeryville, CA. The culture of work in the US is dramatically changing. No longer segregated to the industrial parks and office buildings, knowledge workers and other members of the Creative Class are more mobile, more collaborative, and more flexible with their work. This cultural change …
Once More, In Half the Time
I apologize for the length of this letter, but I didn’t have time to make it shorter. – Mark Twain Twain was referring to the fact that refining something down to it’s essence takes iteration. Each iteration abbreviates the time necessary to produce and consume the item. I offer the Van Buren Law of Iteration: …
Yes, and – not But
Improvisational comedy, like all team sports is about effective, high-energy, spontaneous collaboration. One of the seven major tenets of Improv is building off each person’s comment and suggestion with “Yes, and…” rather than dismissing it with a “but…”. “Yes, and…” extends, explores, and enhances the previous suggestion – building trust among all the team members, …
The Smoke in Need of a Fire-Breathing Dragon
“This sounds like part of an idea. It’s the smoke, and we still need a fire-breathing dragon.” This statement was exclaimed by one of the students I’m working with in my involvement with MCAD‘s Visualization program. I was leading the team through a ideation evaluation exercise – culling down their large number of brainstormed concepts …
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Get Your Email Read with Specific, Compelling Subject Lines
One of my biggest pet peeves is vague email subject lines. This is for two reasons; Sometimes I only have time to read the subject lines – anything urgent needs to jump out. If I need to file and revisit the email, a clear specific subject line is easiest to re-find. My experience analyzing open …
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